Oh yay, Eid Al-Fitr is just around the corner. For celebrating it this year, I decided to embrace the Indonesian culinary tradition in its entirety.

“So, how do Indonesians celebrate Eid Al-Fitr from culinary perspective exactly?” I hear you ask.

Well, for “Lebaran” (that’s what we call Eid Al-Fitr) where we came from typically we have a special meal of lontong (a dish made of compressed rice cake in the form of a cylinder wrapped inside a banana leaf), opor ayam (chicken cooked in coconut milk), acar (pickled cucumber), sambal goreng ati (chicken liver in chili sauce), sayur nangka (jackfruit curry), etc.

And then for snacks we have all sorts of cookies – savory and sweet – so when friends and relatives came to visit for ‘silaturahim’, you’ll have something ready at the table for everyone to sample, unlike the barren table throughout the holy month of Ramadan.

Whilst I always make the Lebaran meal, it’s not the same case with the cookies. I guess I never had the time to do it and was easily rectifying it with replacement store-bought cookies. But this year since I’m on sabbatical, I felt that for once and for all maybe I should make some of my favourite cookies, and tweaked several different recipes (sorry, but some recipes are only available in Bahasa Indonesia, when I finalised my take on the recipes I will post in English)

After a few cooking attempts, I felt like I should bake a couple more kinds of cookies, something with chocolate in it. While at the baking supply stores, I also scored myself some panda cookie cutters, and I just can’t help it. I must make those cute panda cookies and give away to my little friends at Lebaran!

Panda Cookies

Adapted from the recipe as written on the sheet of paper that came with the panda cookie cutters. If you don’t have panda cookie cutters, then use two different sized cookie cutter and make two layered cookies.

Ingredients

120 grams unsalted butter, room temperature

120 grams granulated sugar

1 large egg (about 50 grams), room temperature

[A] For white dough: 160 grams all purpose flour

[B] For cocoa dough: 150 grams all purpose flour + 10 gram dark cocoa

Directions

Using electric mixer, beat butter in a medium or large bowl until smooth.

Beat in sugar in 3 additions

Add egg and beat until blended.

Split the mixture at step 3 into two, and place in 2 separate bowls

Add [A] into one butter mixture bowl and beat just until bended. Then add [B] into the other mixture bowl and beat just until blended

Wrap each dough with plastic and refrigerate until well-chilled, about 30 minutes.

Roll out each dough into about 3mm thickness and cut using cookie cutters

There is this tricky business about practicing Ramadan in the Summer time. I found that my eating/food consumption power is greatly diminished. Not only that, I have literally only about 6 waking hours to eat. Two hours of which is best used for sleeping, since it’s like midnight to 2 am before I get up again for my very early breakfast/suhoor. But then again I should be thankful that I don’t live in places like Russia or Sweden where you only have 2 hours of darkness, or Alaska when the sun never sets in the Summer time.

With Tokyo’s ongoing weather trend of 39C this past week, I am seriously concerned about the state of food in my fridge. It seems to work less effectively as it is stationed in my very own sauna, that is otherwise known as my tiny kitchen.

Zucchini is gold to me, even when I am having a surplus of them. It is a crime to let it go bad. I must either eat it, or cook it!

Browsing through some recipes at lunch time, I stumbled across something deceptively simple at Taste.com.au and decided to give it a try. Glancing through the list of ingredients, I know I have them all in the pantry. And what is even better is that it is something savory. Perfect to be eaten as my suhoor meal.

I am going to quote the recipe as written in the Taste.com.au website, but will be adding some modifications in the directions as I found following the recipe to the T yielded a very wet dough and when I added some flour to make it shapeable then created a slightly over-kneaded dough. Once I found the best adaptation of it, I will update the post.

Preheat the oven to 200°C. Prepare your cookie sheet and line with oven paper or silicone cookie sheet.

Coarsely grate the zucchini, wrap in paper towel and squeeze out excess moisture.

In a large bowl, combine everything from grated zucchini until the buttermilk powder. Gradually add the water and mix with your hands until a soft dough forms**. Turn out onto a lightly floured surface and pat into a 2cm-thick piece. Use a knife and divide the dough into 12 same sized cut. Set on the prepared cookie sheet, brush with some milk

Serve with beef pastrami/sausages and relish, or eat plain.

Yields 12 scones

*You can replace the buttermilk powder and water with just 1 cup buttermilk. I didn’t have any access to fresh buttermilk and must make do with the dried powder I have in the pantry.

**Next time I will stop adding the water at 3/4 cups to see the dough consistency. I tried with 1 cup and the dough was too wet, impossible to shape. I had to add more flour when shaping the dough before cutting and it wasn’t even the prettiest of all dough. The cooked goods were tasty, though!

I actually have another post brewing in the WordPress dungeon, but since I am not done yet with the goods, I will delay that for the weekend.

Tonight I am putting up a quick one: Zucchini bread.

Summer in Japan is almost identical with zucchini for me. Well, since year 2002 anyway. Why? Because that’s the first time I ever picked up the cucumber-look-alike squash and experiment with its texture in cooking or generally eat it in abundance. (Did you know there is only 20 calories in 1 zucchini?)

I have to clarify that I’ve had zucchini long before 2002. It was Summer 1996 when I had zucchini for the very first time. I was on holiday in San Diego and my American host grandmother made some salad and I saw something resembling Japanese cucumber, but didn’t quite taste like one. It was very strange, because it’s almost like you were thinking you were eating chocolate and found out you were eating red beans. Such was my feeling about zucchini. Expecting cucumber, then get squashy blandness in return.

Fast forward. I lived a relatively zucchini-free live for some 6 years.

In 2002, the year I bought my first Jamie Oliver cookbook, The Naked Chef, the year when my culinary exploration began. I scanned through all the recipes in the book and quickly discovered that Jamie O uses a lot of courgettes. Courgettes this, courgette that, courgette everything.

What on earth is a courgette?

A quick Google search led me to understand that courgette is basically zucchini (and while we’re at it… aubergine means eggplant).

Hmm… I guess zucchini is not that odd after all. Jamie O uses it all the time! It must be good! (By now you must already pick up that I take whatever Jamie says with conviction. I trust the dude without a shadow of doubt!)

Since then… 2002, believe it or not, every time I see zucchini sold under 100 yen at a supermarket, I buy at least two. Every time.

Which is how I find myself in the position I am in today. I am having a zucchini overload! Out of habit, I still buy zucchinis even though I have asked Dana to pick up a bag for me when she was at Costco. I have 8 small Italian zucchinis in the fridge, plus the extra 4 big ones I picked up at the farmer’s market. Then when I stopped by Dana’s house last Sunday, she gave me another half-bag of beautiful Italian zucchinis. So many zucchinis!

So… I shall begin making something with it and my first thought went to zucchini bread. Deb Perelman at SmittenKitchen has a very nice recipe that I have made so many times without fail. I made the healthier version that she implied in the text…(fundamental difference in flour and oil composition, substituting some with healthier alternatives).

So, this week I was sort of away from home. By ‘sort of’ I meant I’m home everyday, but just never spent anything more than some odd 2-3 hours in it. My friend Steph is away in India on her yoga training, and her husband was away for coaching a ski trip for the week. They have these two cats whom I love, and they are such house cats who don’t do very well if they are alone for too long. So, cat-sitter Tari hat on, it is.

Here’s the situation. I’ve cat-sit many times before for other friends, but these situation always removed me completely from my home for an extended period of times. This time it is a little different. Steph lives close by. It is about 5 minutes bicycle ride from my house to hers. The other thing is, my own apartment is located right smack in the middle between her home and my office. With this in mind, I simply do not see any reason to pack any suitcase for staying the 9 days. I’ll just shower and pick up my work stuff everyday. Easy peasy. The same treatment is also applied to my weekly grocery shopping. Just buy the usual stuff and pick as I go.

That’s the plan. I thought I was pretty much following it until yesterday when I opened my fridge and tried to figure out what sort of food stuff I should carry to cook at Steph’s when I saw this pitiful bag of very extremely ripe bananas. Poor planning on my part. I normally have bananas for breakfast, but in the midst of juggling two houses – bananas had been forgotten and unnoticed. What to do, what to do… What can I do to 3-4 ripe bananas in one go? The answer is… Banana Bread! I’ve been working on a banana bread recipe for some time now, and thought that I could try some final tweak and was very pleased with the final product.

It is a cold Sunday morning. I am sitting down with a cup of hot coffee and savoring the moist and decadent banana bread.

I am sooooo excited to share this news with you! I believe that I may have finally created my ultimate chocolate cupcake!

For sometime now, I have this idea stuck in my head that it is critically important for a home-baker (who loves chocolate) to have a special recipe that is proof-tested and contains exactly the things that you want to be in there.

So, I set out to find and create my ultimate Chocolate cupcake that is somewhat health conscious. My reasoning: if I know that the chocolate cake contains healthy stuff, then I will feel less guilty about eating a lot of them. If you love something so much and want to consume a bucket load of it, I am a believer that I should at least try to minimize the potential damage from consuming bad stuff. It was very clear from the beginning that this ultimate recipe must use: wholewheat flour, brown sugar (as opposed to white sugar), no butter, and dark chocolate.

After many diligent and calculated trial, proofing and getting some dedicated trial specialists’ opinion, I present you MyOrangePot’s Ultimate Banana+Chocolate Cupcake! It was very good that a little ‘mouse‘ came in and ate almost the whole batch in one sitting! How’s that for approval?

Apologies for posting it a little too late, but it would have been good to make this for your Valentine’s (if you live in Japan, you will know what I mean). Since it’s some days past already, how about making some for girls night in? Satisfaction guaranteed!

3. In the stand-mixer bowl, using the paddle attachment, whisk together all the Dry ingredients 1 on low (KitchenAid 2)

4. In another bowl, whisk together all the Wet Ingredients using the regular whisk

5. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and whisk until combined on low (KitchenAid 2). Do not over-mix it, stop after all the dry ingredients are all integrated.

6. Add the chocolate chips to the bowl, and mix on low (KitchenAid 2) until combined

7. Scoop the batter into the muffin cups (about 3/4 full) and bake for about 20 minutes or until the toothpick comes out clean.

8. Remove from oven when done, and let cool on a wire rack.

9. Garnish with a sprinkle of powdered sugar

*Makes 12 regular-sized cupcakes

**If possible and you can justify the spending, also try to get as many organic ingredients as possible. Not only organic materials are healthier, they also create a richer and well-rounded flavor in the end product.

What do you do when it’s a day-off and but the sky is pouring miserably outside? Another stupid construction is going on 3 floors above you – ever so loudly, but the wet and cold Winter day discouraged you to leave the apartment. What to do?

I tapped on Flipboad on my new favorite ‘cookbook’, aka my iPad 2. By the way, for all iPad users out there, let me ask you this, have you started using “Flipboard” yet? If you haven’t, then you should. It’s a free app for iPad and iPhone, and you can literally integrate all your social media contents in just this one app, and go through it like you would a magazine. It’s so cool. And it’s free. And the Recipes section knocks my socks off.

Anyway, where was I? Right, rainy day blues, bla di bla di bloo… browsing through recipes. One of my favorite things to do when I just wake up in the morning is mindlessly flipping through the Flipboard Recipes section. In my mindless wandering, I came across a “Cheddar, beer and mustard pull-apart bread” at The Smitten Kitchen.

Two things caught my attention here: beer as an ingredient and the idea of pull-apart bread. I know beer is often used on some recipes (usually combining Guinness and beef for a beef stew), but I don’t often come across recipes using it as a softening agent. And I have that bottle of Hoppy sitting in my fridge for what seems like an eternity…

I also love the idea of a pull-apart bread with delicious toppings. I’ve often told myself that I must make some. This kind of bread is like a sandwich already stuffed with goodness. So you don’t need to worry about the accompaniments, you thought about it once and be done with it. Perfect for your lunch plan for the week or to bring to a picnic.

So, Deb from Smitten Kitchen, how have I never found her before is beyond me! Oh my gosh, I love that woman, and her vision for her cooking. Her recipes are very inspirational and forgiving. As I walk you through the step-by-step process I took in recreating her pull-apart bread, I will tell you what stupid mistakes I did and corrected as I go. You will be surprised that the mistakes didn’t seem to affect the end result. That speaks volumes about the solidness of her original recipe. Deb, (cooking) hats off to you!

1/4 cup plus 1/2 cup of Hoppy (originally recipe called for a beer – any beer, preferrably dark – of which I had none, so I used the next best thing in the fridge… Hoppy!)

2 cups + 2/3 cups of whole wheat flour

1 tbsp vital wheat gluten

1/3 cup rye flour

2 tbsp brown sugar (can use granulated sugar, tho I don’t normally have it in the pantry)

2 1/4 tsp instant yeast

1 tsp sea salt (fine)

2 large eggs, room temperature

Filling:

3 tbsp unsalted butter

2 tbsp Dijon mustard

1 1/2 tsp Worcestershire sauce

2 dashes of green tabasco (ran out of red!)

1 1/2 tsp chilli powder

1/2 tsp sea salt (fine)

Several grinds of blackpepper

2 cups shredded red cheddar

Directions

Making the bread dough

1. Heat butter and 1/4 cup of Hoppy until the butter melt in a small saucepan (that can fit about 500ml water). Remove from heat and add the 1/2 cup Hoppy. Let it cool down, because you don’t want it steaming hot (otherwise you will kill the yeast), around 45C/116F would be good.

2. In the stand mixer bowl (I use my KitchenAid), using the paddle attachment, stir 2 cups wholewheat flour, vital wheat gluten brown sugar, yeast and salt. Then with the mixer on low (KitchenAid 2), pour in the butter-Hoppy mix. Add eggs and mix until all combined. Add the remaining WW flour and all of the rye flour, mixing on KA 2 until combined.

3. Replace the paddle attachment with the dough hook and knead for 4 minutes on low (KitchenAid 2).

4. Spray/oil a large bowl and transfer the dough into it. Cover with plastic wrap (doesn’t need to be airtight) and let sit for 60 minutes, until double the size. For a warmer temperature, I heat the oven on the lowest heat setting (about 45C) and switched it off, then I put the bowl in the warmed temperature.

(Good to know: the first time I made this recipe, I screw up two things (1) used the dough hook from the very beginning and (2) completely forgot to add eggs. I corrected it after I finished step 3 by changing the attachment from dough hook to paddle, mix the eggs until combined and then changed back to the dough hook re-kneaded the bread for another 3 minutes. This seems to do the tricks!)

Making the fillings

5. Back in the same saucepan you used in step 1 above, melt butter. Remove from heat and whisk in the Dijon mustard, Worcestershire sauce and tabasco until smooth. Set aside.

6. Take another medium bowl, mix chilli powder, salt and black pepper. Toss cheddar cheese until all strands are sort of evenly coated with spices. Keep this in a cool place until you need to use it, otherwise it will go soft and clumpy.

8. Turn dough out onto a well-floured counter, safe the plastic wrap for Step 14. Roll the dough into 50×30 cm rectangle. Make sure your counter is really well-floured, otherwise you will have difficulties lifting the dough latter on.

9. Brush the dough with the mustard-butter mixing you made in Step 5.

10. Cut the dough crosswise into 5 even strips (10×30 cm each)

11. Sprinkle one strip with 1/5 portion of the cheese mix (you made in Step 6), then place another strip on top of it and sprinkle with another 1/5 portion, and so on, until they are stacked up and sprinkled.

12. With a very sharp knife, cut your stack into 5 segments (6x10cm stacks). (Note: Deb’s recipe said 6-7 segments, but I kinda did the calculation wrong and somehow it just worked out with 5 equal segments)

13. Arrange the dough stacks on the prepared loaf pan like you’re stacking business cards. If you decided to follow my cut and ended up with only 5 stacks, you will find there is a little bit of extra room in the pan, that’s OK, just shake the loaf pan gently so the dough will be right in the center. When it goes through the final rise, it will expand and puff following the shape of the loaf pan.

14. Cover the pan using the plastic cover you saved at Step 8. Set it aside to rise for 30-45 minutes (in the warmed up oven as described in Step 4).

15a.* If you have multiple ovens and can use one to sit the dough in. This will be when I say preheat your other oven to 170C/350F.

15b. **If you’re like me and only have the electric oven/microwave in the one same device, then I would say take the loaf out of the oven after 30 minutes, set it on the counter, THEN preheat your oven now to 170C. If you have a ***baking stone, put that in the oven while preheating.

16. Bake loaf for 30-35 minutes (***if using, put the loaf pan right on top of the baking stone), until puffed and brown and crusty.

17. Remove from oven and transfer to a wire rack, let cool for 5 minutes.

18. Flip out onto a serving plate. Serve warm.

19. If there is any leftover, keep in plastic/zip loc at room temperature. You can reheat in an oven (best result) or microwave (quick but not best).

My family was over to visit this past November. My sister flew in from Switzerland, Mama and Papa flew in from Indonesia. My apartment had never been happier. It was filled with laughter and warmth. Quoting Mehameha, it was filled with the kind of warmth that can only come from families. Something was always going on, someone was always cooking in the kitchen, conversation was never ending, Wii Sports bowling tournament filled the morning. It was a busy house!

While all of the above sounded great, there is some small downside to things. My apartment is not geared to accommodate 4 (sometimes 6) people. My humble abode is ideal for 1-2 persons, but not 4, much less 6. There were trunks and stuff everywhere. It was almost impossible to make a journey from the bedroom to the bathroom without stepping on someone sleeping in the evening.

In my attempt to make the one-month-family-reunion as smooth and comfortable as possible (and to keep everyone’s sanity intact!), I sought after some help from Stephanie and Hideki. S&H very generously provides refuge and let us use their guest tatami-room, for the entire duration my family was in Japan.

It was during that stay I observe one of Stephanie’s habits that I quickly want to adopt. You see, Stephanie is an excellent cook and baker. She has this giant cookie jar on the kitchen counter that she replenishes every few days with the likes of ginger bread, banana bread, oatmeal cookies, chocolate chip cookies, blueberry muffins and the variety goes on. It was amazing! She always says to me, “Don’t forget to check the cookie jar in the kitchen if you’re hungry!”

And that I did. Frequently.

Family members left, I am back at home. I caught myself thinking longingly of the cookie jar on Stephanie’s kitchen counter. What is inside it today?